Photos courtesy of Sky Angel
Master control room at Sky Angel monitors all of the channels broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A complaint from a local Christian media company has triggered a Federal Communications Commission investigation.

Naples-based Sky Angel, a multichannel, Internet-protocol, or IP based video programming distributor, filed a program-access complaint against Discovery Channel in 2010 for terminating its agreement.

The complaint raised the issue of how the FCC interprets the term multichannel video programming distributor, or MVPD, and if it should include Internet-based distributors and the word "channel."

"All Sky Angel wants is a level of playing field and I don't believe that there is a level of playing field right now," said Tom Scott, president of Sky Angel, a private company with thousands of customers nationwide.

"We really feel there are more channels that we could offer to our customers, but we have not been able to get the programmers to offer them to us yet. We continue to talk to them in hopes of being able to add some more channels in the future."

Discovery Channel officials declined to comment since there is a pending dispute. But David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, told the New York Times that "somebody's going to come over the top" and sell a package of cable channels via the Internet at some point.

In 2010, Discovery notified Sky Angel it would terminate the affiliation agreement on April 22, 2010, even though the term of the agreement continued through Dec. 31, 2014, according to Sky Angel's complaint.

Discovery declared that the entire basis for the termination was "determined that the distribution methodology used by and on behalf of affiliate (Sky Angel) is not satisfactory," according to a March 24, 2010, complaint.

Sky Angels alleges that "Discovery clearly has discriminated against Sky Angel in violation of the program access rules, to the detriment of Sky Angel's subscribers and potential subscribers."

Discovery has never offered any explanation of how or why it had arrived at its determination. Scott said they received a call saying that Discovery was "uncomfortable with the way they were delivering the product."

"They just basically breached a contract," said Scott, adding that Sky Angel offered Discovery for two years before they decided to end it.

Scott said if Sky Angel is found to be a multichannel video programming distributor by the FCC, Discovery cannot do that under the current rules.

Janice Wise, an FCC spokeswoman, said she could not comment on a pending compliant.

Sky Angel's complaint has been holding for about 27 months.

In February, Sky Angel asked a U.S. Court of Appeals to force the FCC to act on the complaint.

Moreover, the FCC's media bureau released a public notice seeking public comments on the interpretation of the terms multichannel video programming distributor and channel.

Sky Angel, nationwide subscription-based service, offers subscribers to choose from two packages of programming: the faith package — which has more than 37 faith-based channels — and family friendly package — which contains more than 25 of America's best family friendly cable channels, including the NFL Network channel, Hallmark and at one time Discovery channels subject to the complaint.

All programing is delivered as "real-time" linear channels to a subscriber's television set using a set-top box similar to the ones used by the cable and satellite industries. Viewers cannot get Sky Angel's cable type channels from a website, unlike the faith-based channels that can be accessed online.

The Sky Angel service's price range is $14.99 to $32.99.

For now, Scott said, his company is in the middle of the way video could eventually be delivered to users' homes.